A Dark Side Of Human Nature ——Analysis On Characters In Zhang Tianyi’s Novels

Zhang Tianyi is an outstanding novelist in the history of modern Chinese literature. At first, he got the attention of literary critics by his short satirical stories, who was praised as "left-wing neophyte". He was good at portraying the various clownism of all kinds of characters, explored the darkness of human nature, exposed the limits of morality, the inadequate of reality and the drawbacks of culture. Based on Zhang Tianyi’s novels, the paper explains the characters systematically in terms of ugly trait, creative concept and descriptive value, in order to grasp and understand the characters in Zhang Tianyi’s novels in the round.The paper is mainly composed by five parts:Prolegomenon briefly introduces the reason and significance of the topic, and review the research status of the characters in Zhang Tianyi’s novels. The first chapter mainly analyzes the ugly trait of characters and divides the type of ugly trait, such as the greed for eager to climb up the social ladder, the hypocrisy of duplicity, two-way rendering of violence and the emptiness without attachment. The various clownism is distinctive and related, enriches the connotation of the characters by combined action. The second chapter explores the creative concept conveyed by the characters. Zhang Tianyi regards the characters as the basis of ugliness and thinks of pungent satire as the weapon of ugliness. He exposes the ugliness from characters’ words and deeds to spiritual world, and then to social conduct, which forms sharp moral irony and cultural criticism. The third chapter discusses the descriptive value of characters. Zhang Tianyi uses the exploration of the darkness of human nature to resist the rude battle cry of left-wing literature, breaks through the fickle realistic atmosphere, which regains the theme of the exploration of national character. The characters have made a transition from individual ugliness to common ugliness, which not only carry on the Lu Xun’s satirical model in the 1920’s, but also bring up the satirical object in the 1940’s, serving as a link between past and future. From the perspective of aesthetics, Zhang Tianyi use "smile" to reflect the original appearance of ugliness, which leads to the tragicomic transcendence of ugliness. The conclusion summarizes the full text and discusses the connection between the characters in Zhang Tianyi’s novels and the creation of ugliness by Contemporary writers. Meanwhile, it points out the idea that Zhang Tianyi strongly suspects that literature should describe the life and reflect the human nature.